


vision

by ivorygates, synecdochic



Series: alternate abydos [4]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Abydos, Alternate Universe, Imported, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-01
Updated: 2008-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 17:59:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6434614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates, https://archiveofourown.org/users/synecdochic/pseuds/synecdochic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dana're comes to Dan'yel to ask him for a seeing. </p><p>(The one in which Daniel, his twin Dana're, and Jack were all born on Abydos.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	vision

**Author's Note:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/203780.html) 2008-04-01.)

Six turns of the moon past the winter rains, at the height of the crisp and sere days before the weeks and months of the harsher and more punishing rains of summer's dawn, during the indrawn breath of the world's face before the river swells her bounds to spread _kemet_ across the fields and fertilize the crops for another season, Dana're comes to Dan'yel, in the shade of his-and-their tent during the maddening heat of noon's height, and kneels before his feet. "I would have speech with you," she says. She does not go veiled inside these walls -- Oneer, laughing, had loosed his hands to the sky and bewailed her immodesty, but it had been naught but play-acting, for Oneer is as indulgent with Dana're as Dan'yel and Kasuf-their-father have ever and always been, and Oneer is wise enough to know that husband's dictates are no less likely to be followed than brother's or father's, with one so fierce-willed as Dana're. But her eyes are lowered to the smoothed sands beneath her knees, and Dan'yel knows a stab of fear, for she does not name him _brother_ or _twin_ or _darling_.

He reaches out and catches at her shoulders with his hands, tries to urge her to rise, but she will not stir herself; she is slight and delicate as any proper woman might be, but her years of riding at Dan'yel's side have lent her a wiry strength that slight frame belies. "Do not kneel to me, heart-twin," he says, his heart drumming in his chest as though he were caught in a stampede of mastadages. He can think of no cause for her to choose to begin her words thus, save for the retelling of ill news; he will not allow himself to dwell upon what form that ill news might assume, but he cannot bear for her to deliver it as though she were naught but a frightened penitent. 

She does not rise, but she lifts her eyes, and though he has spent every day of their ten-and-ten-and-one years studying that beloved face, he can find as little meaning there as others can see in the casting of bones or the secret depths of _senetjer_ smoke, all symbols he can interpret as readily as he can speak the syllables of his own true-name and others think naught but a chance scattering or a pleasing scent. It chills his blood, even in the still and heavy air. Her face is grave. "Voice of the Gods, I would have speech with you," she repeats, and Dan'yel's chill grows colder, for never has his twin called upon him in his role of knower-of-knowings; indeed he would have thought she never would. "For I am in need of your wisdom."

Never has Dan'yel refused one who has sought his counsel, but never has that counsel been sought by the only one who (until the coming of Oneer, brother-not-of-blood, beloved and cherished and gift whole and entire) has never looked upon his face and known fear. "No," he says, and his refusal weighs as heavy on his lips as a basket of godstone does on the shoulders, for does he not know that his gift-and-burden belongs to his people and is not something he may pick-and-choose as a gleaner harvests a field, leaving behind the dross while harvesting the choice sheaves? And yet he cannot bear for his beloved to regard him with the worship and awe the others have shown after the madness of the gods descends upon him; for all that she has seen him speak and speak truly since his gift-and-burden first unveiled its face in his ten-and-second year, for all that she has stood by his side and been the trellis for his vine as it climbs towards the light, it is different for all people when that light illumines their own dark spaces. He cannot bear; it is too much for her to ask.

Her voice is as steady and firm as a brick of sun-baked clay as her chin finally comes up; he knows it for her sign that she will not be gainsaid. "Once have I called, twice have I called," she says, the sing-song rhythms of the women's language she almost never uses when there are no ears but theirs to hear her. "Three times I call upon you, Voice of the Gods, clan's tongue, speaker of truths no other may hear or see, for have I not stood at your side as you brought truth to many-upon-many in proper season? We have need of your truth, ai, the husband of my body and I, in coin for the service I have done you and the love you profess to bear us both, and I shall not rise until you agree to speak it to me. Voice of the Gods, _I would have speech with you._ "

Never has Dan'yel had the will to refuse his twin aught she desires. It has ever and always been his one weakness. He buries his face in his hands; he cannot bear the weight of her gaze upon him. "Speak, then, what truth you desire," he says, heavy with the burden of the role he will never, can never, renounce, heavy with the burden of knowing the one thing he thought sacred has proven to be something Dana're is as willing to set aside as she would be a pleasure-love. It burns his lips like the sun's rays. He is shamed to hear himself add, "Should you trust truth given from one you say has been bearing falsehood in his affections." 

When he lets his hands fall away, he can see her brows draw together, and he has the small and petty pleasure of seeing shock spread across her face as though he has lifted the back of his hand to her. For a moment he thinks she might protest, but he sees her hands clutch at the fabric of her robes, and her face hardens; she lowers her eyes again and speaks the ritual words, the ones that have fallen to his ears over and again. "Voice of the Gods, I come before you to ask you to part the veil between this world and the next and to seek for me the answer I am unworthy to receive." She swallows, heavily; he knows the cant of her head and the twist of her fingers to be her signs of shame, the realization that one of her ill-conceived plans has brought to her grief beyond her imagining. And yet, he has never known her to fail in the seeing-through of one of those plans to completion, were she not prevented by wiser and cooler heads. "The husband of my body and I have not yet been blessed with the quickening of my womb. I wish to know my failing; speak to me of how I must mend my errors, so I may bring forth sons and daughters for the glory of the gods and of House and Line."

He is moved to laughter, but it is the edged shaft of sound that holds no amusement against its fletches. "Seek your answer in the tents of women," he says, his voice harsh in his ears; harsher than her question deserves, for does he not hear similar petitions days and days again, knowing each of them to be the height and depths of a person's world even as it is nothing more than the thousandth repetition of a familiar chant to his own? "For it is women who know the women's mysteries. You need not waste my time, nor the time of the gods, with such a petition." 

It is his anger that makes him cruel; had she but come to him, on bare feet and in the robes of the house rather than robed in her self-spun best and clad in her finest sandals in the manner of any petitioner of the clans, come to pour her worries into his cupped hands like water, he would have been moved to offer her a knowing of his own volition, for what good is his gift-and-burden if it cannot be used to ease the heart of the one who has been his world's center since the days when they grew, entwined together, beneath the heart of their mother? But it is not well done for a beloved to seek to force his hand, not when he had thought this the one place he would be safe of such a seeming, even when it is his shame that he had not realized it has been six moons since she and Oneer had made _sha'lo'qi_ and yet Dana're's woman-time has come upon her, moon after moon, to signify she has not yet gotten with child. He should have seen her growing unease, for while she had gone to her marriage-bed far older than most, she is young still, and strong; six moons is more than enough time for her and Oneer to have been granted the knowing of their first child. He is able to bear witness that they have not been stinting in such activity that would allow for the fields of Dana're's womb to be plowed and seeded; indeed, he has teased them as crassly as any servant-of-the-body, for he has knowledge of their marriage-bed that only a servant-of-the-body would ofttimes have. 

The first thread of unease stirs in his heart; blind he has been, to fail to see Dana're wondering at her failings, that she and Oneer have not been blessed. Blind he has been, to fail to see Dana're wondering if she has chosen poorly in her choice of husband of her body, that they have been unable to cause her body to quicken with life. Oneer is older than they, but not yet past the strength of his years; well should he be able to father child after child. Well should she be able to bear them. And yet Daniel has seen the woman's-rags hung out to dry, moon after moon, and has not looked past them to see the worry well-hidden in Dana're's face.

A fine knower-of-knowings he is, to serve his beloved so ill; he wishes, suddenly, that he could reach between them and re-claim his harsh and cutting words he has let fall, for his heart-twin must be near-sick with worry. But before he can begin to mend the rended garment of their care, she looks up again, and he can see her determination, more hardened than rendered godstone. "Already I have," she says, as fierce as any mother defending her children, though those children not yet be born. "They may find no reason why my belly has not yet begun to swell. I have come to you to ask how I have angered the gods, and what price I might pay in reparation, for while it might be well for me to be punished, Oneer has done naught to earn their displeasure, and for his honor I will fight to the end of my breath, for his honor is now the honor of the House of Kasuf. Say to me what I must do to cause the gods to smile upon us." 

Her voice catches. Dan'yel's hands ache to comfort her, but she has sung the lines for their tale, the roles they must play, and once sung he cannot re-chant them. She has called upon him in his seeming as the Voice of the Gods, and the Voice of the Gods should, _must_ , be able to maintain his distance. It is this thought that calls to mind her reason for speaking thus, in a flash more bright than the noonday sun; had she brought her worries to her brother, she would not have been able to bear the shame and guilt of thinking that her years of whim and indulgence had caused the gods to mark her for their curses, and she would not have been able to bear up beneath the weight of that guilt, more burdensome than a stone hung around the neck. To bring such a fear to the Voice of the Gods is to perchance hear truth told plain, without the comforting ease a brother's love might move him with which to cushion that truth, but it is also to know that truth for the truth entire, unmarred by pretty circumlocution. Dana're is quick of mind enough to realize that though her brother and the Voice of the Gods share one body, one spirit, they needs must be treated as separate men, for indeed, each of those men must serve a different purpose.

The last of his anger drains away, for he may see now the pain she wears as stiffly as she wears her formal robes, and it wounds him as deeply as though he bear that pain himself. "Beloved," he says, softly, and her head comes up as though she were a hunter scenting prey upon the winds. He forestalls any protest she might make by adding, "I shall turn my face to the gods, that they might hear your plea and grant me the truth you desire."

Relief moves in her eyes, swift and sharp, and she rises on her knees, bends to kiss the hem of his robes. "I will bear watch for you," she says -- a role she has played, over and again, while his spirit wanders the Halls of Truth for its answers; she is as strong as any guardian, and in that moment of offering (for he will never count her assistance as something to which he is entitled; each offering is a profession of love, whole and entire) he sees her, as he always does, with the sight of his other eyes, the body of her spirit standing firm and tall behind the body of her body, holding the scepter and scythe of the warrior ready to savage anything that might prove him a threat. Then she looks up at him, and for a moment, she is but his sister again: heart-twin, beloved and cherished, a small and worried woman who seeks the reassurance of at least knowing _an_ answer, no matter what that answer might be. "If you so wish it," she finishes, uncertain (as she must be) whether her offer of assistance will be rejected for the damage she fears to have done to the bonds that hold them together and will until their end of days.

But they are one soul, even if they wear two bodies, two spirits, and he has never been able to bear anger for her any more than the few moments it would take for water to drain from a cracked cup, and for much the same reason. "Come," he says, abrupt and rough, rising to his feet and holding down a hand for her to take; they will play their roles, yes, the roles that she has cast him into, but he will not have his guardian-of-spirit kneeling to him in petitioner's obeisance. 

She bites her lip again, but takes the hand he offers; he does not release her hand as he pushes through the silken inner-walls of the tent. Oneer has been as generous with their cubits to Dan'yel as Kasuf-his-father was before; there is space set aside for Dan'yel's place-of-journey, and no man nor woman will set foot inside its walls without his word. Once he is standing inside its confines, he is lighter of spirit, for this chamber is his and his entire, and the ease of familiarity is ease, truly. His gift-and-burden is ofttimes more burden than gift, but the gift it bears is no less the sweeter for the burden that creeps in behind it on heavy feet. To know the touch of the gods is something no man can describe, and though it may be wound as much as balm, it is not something he would renounce, even could he. 

Often enough, merely standing here will cause the knowing-of-knowings to soar within his heart, cause the words of the gods to leap to his lips unbidden, but this noontime his spirit is heavy; his ears feel as dead, his chest as tight, as he would feel standing alone in the deepest and smallest pit of the deep-mines. Dana're lets her hand fall from his as he enters; she busies herself with kindling the brazier, taking down the box of _senetjer_ to ready it. She knows as well as he, and without any word of direction, that this is not an answer that may be found by studying the scattering of bones or the patterns of sand made by a trailing garment; he has often thought that his heart-twin bears some small piece of his sight, of his knowings, in the silence of her own spirit, some shard that survived their sundering from one into two. Truly she knows what he will need before he does, on the days that the voices of the gods are quiet in his ears. 

He allows her the small-tasks of preparation; there are cushions piled before the brazier, and it is upon them he settles himself. The rite and ritual is calming to the part of his spirit unsettled by his hasty words. He closes his eyes and breathes, deeply, as she wafts the _senetjer_ smoke to him. He is unsettled, true, but the Old Tongue words of the prayer he chants bring the first stirrings of comfort, for he has spoken them day and day again, since the weight of his gift-and-burden first settled on his shoulders: "Praise to Thee, Ra, Lord of the Day, who art truth and truth eternal, glorified in Thy radiance, Thou who art come unto us bearing light which is life which is truth and blessing and gift! Thou who art the first and the foremost, thou who hast set light upon the darkness and lifted up men from the darkness of their hearts, I pray Thee stretch out Thy hand and rest it upon my lips and burn away all falsehood; I pray unto Thee that Thou might make me worthy of the gift of Thy knowing, for I come forth unto Thee with my thoughts empty for Thou to fill them; O Ra Thou Lord of Light, may my mouth be sanctified for Thy truth and Thy flame; may Thou guide me unto Thy halls to carry Thy wisdom; give Thou unto me my mouth that I may speak with it --"

The _senetjer_ catches at the back of his tongue, and then he knows no more.

Time and again has Dan'yel's spirit walked the pathways of the Halls of Truth, and each time has he been aware that he leaves his body behind, but this, _this_ is as though he has been caught up by the hands of the gods and moved elsewhere-and-entire; his breath sounds in his ears, his heart sounds in his chest, and the walls around him are heavy with gold and fire. But no further sound stirs within them. He has never looked upon the face of Ra, the Lord of the Day, all praise and glory be heaped upon his name; it is not well-done for a living man, even though he be Voice of the Gods, to gaze upon the naked faces of those he serves. When he comes here, it is often just to find peace and solace while the gods speak through the lips of his body, left behind. 

And yet, these hallways have no peace awaiting him. They are cold and silent, as heavy and ponderous as the deadness in his ears and in the caverns of his spirit was before he sought this path. 

If the gods are here, they do not speak to him, and he sees no visions he may look to for answers.

"Praise to Thee," he continues speaking, and his voice is no balm neither. He clears his throat. "Let the way be opened in Thee. Let my hands and my lips be glorified and sanctified in Thy service. Let my heart be weighed in Thy scales and found pleasing; I have come unto Thee to be purified in Thy light; evil shall have no root in my heart or in my spirit, for Thy light will burn away all darkness --" 

He cannot say how long he recites the prayers of preparation. Longer, in truth, than he ever has before, for he cannot recall a time, not once in his years of this service, when he has recited the prayers straight through without knowledge or vision coming to him before their end. After a time, he lets his voice fall silent; his lips continue to shape the prayers, for they are comfort even if they are nothing more, but he does not believe they will be heard. The gods have never forsaken him before, and he will not believe they have forsaken him now, for is he not here in the Halls of Truth, walking the pathways they have trod so many times? Was he not brought here to serve them? And yet there is no sound, nor sight neither, and after a time (so long and weary) his strength begins to falter, and he sinks to the floor and leans his head against the wall in weakness.

"Praise to Thou who art exalted, Lord of the Day, Lord of Lords, Ra the Eternal," he says, quietly. It is the first sound he has heard in -- how long? How long has he walked these hallways, seeking an answer that has not come? And yet, he has not spoken the question; he has never had cause to, before. Always have the gods been able to hear the question on his heart and his spirit when he carries it forth to them; never has he needed to press it into the form of words like the hands of the clay-worker presses lump into sphere into vessel. But there is cause for all men to learn that which they have never had to know before, and it is the mark of that lessoning that makes men men, rather than beasts of the field. "I have come to bear the cause of my sister, my heart, who begs me to seek how she has offended Thee, that she might make amends and find Thy favor, so that she and the husband of her body might be blessed with child for Thy glory." 

He waits. Nothing, and nothing again. Nothing. His heart is an empty vessel; his spirit hangs bare in the winds, uncomforted. Ra speaks not. 

There is no panic here (nor passion neither; in the Halls of Truth, the spirit is not made to carry strong emotion, even when he cannot find serenity), but were he not within their boundaries, he would know its flutter, for this is nothing like to any journey he has taken before. He closes his eyes and forces his limbs to bend beneath him, his spine to straighten. The bite of the _senetjer_ -smoke is long forgotten on the back of his tongue, but he conjures its memory in his senses as well he can, and turns his spirit in on itself, seeking the still small voice inside of him that he had never thought he could lose. Journeys within journeys, circles inside circles; he is here as spirit, as he must be, for no body can walk the Halls of Truth whether living or dead, but his spirit wears the robes of body, and perhaps he must discard those robes as best he can and walk out naked for the eyes of the gods. 

"Praise to Thou, O Lord --" he says, without voice, the barest hint of breath. He cannot say what makes him alter the prayers that he has learned from first-word to last-word, whole and entire. "Praise to the face of Truth, in whatever seeming Truth might wear. Come Thou into me."

And suddenly he is enveloped in light. It does not burn; it does not sear; it does not peel away his skin like one who has spent too long outside of shade at noonday sun. And yet, it is as though he dissolves in light, into light, comfort and reassurance, rain falling on parched ground. The words come to him as the words always have, and he could weep with relief, were he not so caught up in its blessing: _you had but to ask._

When he opens his eyes again, it takes him a long moment to piece together what he is seeing into the roof of the tent of Oneer, and a longer moment still before he realizes the quality of light is dark, not because it is evening, but because the rains have come upon them. The sound of water striking the tent-canvas is a rhythmic lull, like drumming around the fire-circle in the time of telling-of-tales. It is a sound he has always loved. His head pulses. His body is lying on a pile of linens and cushions; his mouth is as dry as the deepest of the deep desert at the height of the dry-season, and his limbs feel weak and wearied as though his endless walking had been truth, not vision. 

Oneer and Dana're are sitting beside him, one to each hand; the sound in his ears resolves into Dana're, weeping, and she throws her body across his chest. "Dan'yel!" she says, the words falling from her lips in a rush so fast he can barely understand them with ears tuned for listening for the voice of the gods. "Dan'yel, speak to me -- say something that I know it is you, beloved, say something that I know the voice of the gods has left you --"

"Peace," Oneer says, stern and loving, and places his hands on Dana're's shoulders to remove her weight from Dan'yel's chest. "Can you not see that he has come back to himself, for all that we had begun to fear he might never be free of the gods' tongue again? Do not force him to speak too quickly; it can be no comfort to return from the Halls of Truth after so long." 

Dana're checks her weeping and pulls herself away, though she leaves a hand on Dan'yel's arm. Her touch burns. Dan'yel licks lips gone dry and bleeding. "How long?" he speaks, or tries so; his voice is naught but a ragged croak. 

Oneer's eyes are darker shadows in the shadows of his face. "Ten-and-ten-and-four days," he says. "We had thought --"

He does not finish his speech. Dan'yel pushes himself to his elbows; Oneer puts an arm behind him, and Dan'yel is not shamed to lean back against it, for truly he does not believe he could sit unaided. As Oneer believes he will not fall, Oneer reaches for the cup of water waiting to hand, and holds it to Dan'yel's lips. Dan'yel drinks, deeply. He cannot remember water ever tasting so sweet. It is not the first time he has sent his spirit to the Halls of Truth while, behind him, the gods used his lips and tongue to speak their truths; it is why he is always careful to have someone to stand guardian, that they might remember the words he has no memory of speaking. 

But his journeys to the Halls of Truth have never been so long as a single day before, much less ten-and-ten-and-four. He is the first to wear the mantle of Voice of the Gods in generations and generations again; he has been forced to learn his craft from tales older than the oldest grandmother, and the tales have come to him as twisted as yarn spun from the fur of the mastadage, forcing him to pick through the misunderstandings and falsehoods to find the thread of truth they are woven around; he would not have been winner, had the gods not granted him the gift of knowing in his heart of hearts. But surely the tales would have carried the knowledge of its possibility, had anyone before walked the realm of the spirit for so long in the length of the clan's memory.

It does not comfort Dan'yel to know this, for all it has the feel of a true-knowing, for he has long since known that the gods do not give their gifts lightly, nor do they call upon men to do that which they do not need, and should the gods require him to perform such tasks, it can mean naught but that such feats have greater purpose. And knowing that the hands of the gods have rested upon his brow has never been easy, but never before has it left him feeling so afright. 

The rains, heavy and ponderous, sound on the canvas of the tent. His heart beats against their rhythms, and there is a rock in his throat, as heavy as the gates of the city and twice as unwieldy. Dana're and Oneer are watching him, their eyes uncertain upon his face. (Uncertain, but never afright.) "Have you an answer?" Dana're asks, catching his hands, holding them in firmest grip. "Have you --"

"You are with child," Dan'yel says. He had not known it until he spoke, but as he does, he can see the images of truth unfolding before him: a young girl, of five or six summers, hair like cedar spilling down her shoulders and eyes like the darkest flecks of ebony, clinging to Oneer's hand. In his mind's eye, overlaid upon the world that is around him, she turns her head and says to him: _it begins here_.

Dizzy with the strain of watching two worlds at once, Dan'yel barely hears Oneer's soft-muttered, "Praise be to Ra."

But he does hear his own voice, brought forth from his lips without his bidding: "Thank not Ra, for she and we will be Ra's downfall. Too long have false gods ground us between the heel of their sandals; it is the time when we and ours must rise to day and return to the teaching of the true gods that lie beyond."

There is silence in the tent, after he speaks. Oneer and Dana're are shocked. Well should they be, for has he not spoken blasphemy of the highest order? And yet he has always been the gods' voice, granted knowing beyond the knowing of the world that may be touched and tasted, guiding and shaping the destiny of his people; in this, he cannot speak falsely. 

He knows. He _knows_. The gods have given him knowledge of truth no man should ever have, and yet he cannot turn his feet away from this path, for once begun -- by his question, all-unknowing; by his opening of himself to the voices of truth that lie beyond that which he has always known; by the knowledge, sudden and staggering, that he has always served the true-gods that lie beyond, that his skills and talents come from them and always have -- it must be seen through to the end. 

For a moment he believes his blasphemy might go too far. Not for Dana're, who has never failed to be his hands in all things, but for Oneer, who is a good and virtuous man. But Oneer's wisdom has never failed him yet in Dan'yel's knowing, and that wisdom must say Dan'yel speaks not falsehood but gods' own truth.

"Tell us of what you know, of your mercy," Oneer says, his voice rough and weighted, and Dan'yel opens his mouth and does.


End file.
